The arms reduction agreement signed by U.S. President Obama and Russian Prime Minister Putin last week is, according to Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, “useless at best, detrimental at worst.”

President Obama intends for the agreement to serve as an example, encouraging nations such as North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear programs. But, as Krauthammer points out, history does not support his logic. “That a man of Obama’s intelligence can believe such nonsense is beyond comprehension,” he wrote. “The very notion that Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will suddenly adjure nukes because of yet another U.S.-Russian treaty is comical.”

Krauthammer noted that the agreement is essentially useless considering the irrelevance of the level of offensive nuclear weaponry in question, and it is also detrimental because of the price exacted by the Russians—namely, a “linkage between offensive and defensive weapons.” He continued,

This is important for Russia because of the huge American technological advantage in defensive weaponry. We can reliably shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile. They cannot. And since defensive weaponry will be the decisive strategic factor of the 21st century, Russia has striven mightily for a quarter-century to halt its development. Gorbachev tried to swindle Reagan out of the Strategic Defense Initiative at Reykjavik in 1986. Reagan refused. As did his successors—Bush i, Clinton, Bush ii.Obama, who seeks to banish nuclear weapons entirely, has little use for such prosaic contrivances. …Obama doesn’t even seem to understand the ramifications of this concession. Poland and the Czech Republic thought they were regaining their independence when they joined nato under the protection of the United States. They now see that the shield negotiated with us and subsequently ratified by all of nato is in limbo. Russia and America will first have to “come to terms” on the issue, explained President Dmitry Medvedev. This is precisely the kind of compromised sovereignty that Russia wants to impose on its ex-Soviet colonies—and that U.S. presidents of both parties for the past 20 years have resisted.Resistance, however, is not part of Obama’s repertoire. Hence his eagerness for arcane negotiations over mirv’d missiles, the perfect distraction from the major issue between the two countries: Vladimir Putin’s unapologetic and relentless drive to restore Moscow’s hegemony over the sovereign states that used to be Soviet satrapies.That—not nukes—is the chief cause of the friction between the United States and Russia. You wouldn’t know it to hear Obama in Moscow pledging to halt the “drift” in U.S.-Russian relations. Drift? The decline in relations came from Putin’s desire to undo what he considers “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century—the collapse of the Soviet empire. Hence his squeezing Ukraine’s energy supplies. His overt threats against Poland and the Czech Republic for daring to make sovereign agreements with the United States. And finally, less than a year ago, his invading a small neighbor, detaching and then effectively annexing two of Georgia’s provinces to Mother Russia.

As we wrote last week, “Barack Obama stood face to face with Vladimir Putin and tried to press that reset button. He failed. … Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow likely fueled Vladimir Putin’s deadly ambitions, and accelerated the fulfillment of some earth-shaking Bible prophecies!”

America Grooming Islamic Terrorists

The New York Times yesterday published an article on the fbi’s investigation into how a group of middle-class Somali-American students living in Minnesota turned coat and became radical Islamic terrorists.

The University of Minnesota isn’t known for training al Qaeda operatives. Yet that is what it is unknowingly doing. In this case a group of students—refugees who came to America as small boys and went to university to become doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs—have returned to Somalia and joined al Qaeda in an attempt to overthrow the fragile government.

But with these men possessing U.S. passports and training, American officials worry that American targets could be next.

The students are among more than 20 young Americans who are the focus of what may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11. One of the men, Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up in Somalia in October, becoming the first known American suicide bomber. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert M. Mueller, has said Mr. Ahmed was “radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota.”

Investigations of relatives of the men, by law enforcement officials and lawyers, as well as access to live phone calls and Facebook messages between the men and their friends in the United States, reveals how a far-flung jihadist movement found a foothold in America’s heartland.

According to the Times, the first wave of U.S.-based Somalis that joined al Qaeda resembled typical recruits—the disenfranchised, college dropouts, gang members, etc. But more recently, recruits are Somalis that by all measures are succeeding in America.

The case has forced federal agents and terrorism analysts to rethink some of their most basic assumptions about the vulnerability of Muslim immigrants in the United States to the lure of militant Islam. For years, it seemed that “homegrown” terrorism was largely a problem in European countries like Britain and France, where Muslim immigrants had failed to prosper economically or integrate culturally. By contrast, experts believed that the successful assimilation of foreign-born Muslims in the United States had largely immunized them from the appeal of radical ideologies. …Even among the world’s jihadists, the young men from Minneapolis are something of an exception: In their instant messages and cellphone calls, they seem caught between inner-city America and the badlands of Africa, pining for Starbucks one day, extolling the virtues of camel’s milk and Islamic fundamentalism the next.

As interesting and sobering as the fbi investigation is, authorities ought to be investigating the role America’s pervasive spirit of political correctness, particularly multiculturalism and tolerance, is playing in the radicalization of terrorists born and bred in America.

Cap-and-Trade Would Cripple Economy

The cap-and-trade bill under consideration in the U.S. would cripple the economy, wrote David Limbaugh Friday. “Even if we accept, for purposes of argument, the assumptions of radical, hysterical leftist environmentalists that man-caused global warming will destroy the planet if evil, rich capitalists don’t radically curtail their own contributions to the catastrophe,” said Limbaugh, the bill “would not prevent this Armageddon.” However, the bill’s “negative impact on the economy would not be inconsequential,” he says. The Heritage Foundation’s Ben Lieberman “says the bill would cause estimated job losses averaging about 1.15 million from 2012-2030, and the cumulative projected loss in gross domestic product would be almost $10 trillion by 2035.”

Limbaugh went on to outline further less-known things about the bill, concluding that “it is not so much about global warming as Obaman wealth redistribution.”

The Founding Fathers and our fathers are rolling over in their graves as this great country voluntarily abandons its dreams of equal opportunity, achievement and prosperity and sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Meanwhile, as cap-and-trade advocates get stomach ulcers over so-called global warming, “Mother Nature,” as Deroy Murdock put it today, “refuses to cooperate” by continuing in a chill that began 11 years ago. As Murdock notes,

June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal—the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service stated July 1: “The last time that Central Park hit 85 in May … but not in June, was back in 1903.”In Phoenix, June’s high temperatures were below 100 degrees for 15 days straight, the first such June since 1913. The June average in California’s desert Yucca Valley was 83.5, which was 8.5 degrees below normal. Downtown Los Angeles averaged 74.5 degrees, 5 degrees below normal.Boston saw temperatures 4.7 degrees below normal. “This is the second coldest average high temp since 1872,” veteran meteorologist and Weather Channel alumnus Joseph D’Aleo reports at Icecap.com. “It has been so cool and so cloudy that trees in northern New England are starting to show colors that normally first appear in September.” …New Zealand’s National Climate Center issued a June 2 press release headlined, “Temperature: Lowest ever for May for many areas, colder than normal for all.”

What does all this mean? It means to whip so-called global warming, there is no need for Washington to shackle the economy with rules and regulations, resulting in the loss of over 1 million jobs and trillions of dollars. Nor is there a need for Kyoto Protocols and a global web of new regulations or UN guidelines. Want to beat global warming? Just “let the cold times roll.”

For more on the economic implications of the cap-and-trade bill, see Robert Morley’s column “Cap-and-Trade: The Industrial Anti-Revolution.” To learn more about the man-made global warming farce, read “A Really Inconvenient Truth.”

A Second Stimulus?

America’s economy continues to go south faster than the government anticipated. Recently Vice President Joe Biden said that the Obama administration “misread how bad the economy was” early in its term. The enormous indebtedness it has incurred trying to fix the problem has not worked.

Why then is the Obama administration now talking about the possibility of unleashing a “second stimulus” package?

Firstly, the government has already passed a second stimulus and is actually considering a third. George Will makes this point in his column today. The first stimulus—for $168 billion—passed in February 2008, when unemployment was 4.8 percent. That didn’t have the anticipated stimulatory effect on the economy. Thus came the second stimulus—4½ times larger than the first.

In January, the Obama administration, shiny as a new dime and bursting with brains, said that unless another stimulus—Stimulus ii wound up involving $787 billion—was passed immediately, unemployment, which then was 7.6 percent, would reach 9 percent by 2010. But halfway through 2009, the rate is 9.5.

Passing another stimulus bill patently ignores the fact that the first two tried to solve the problem by making it bigger—that is, more debt, more government intrusion, regulation and oversight. America is already in a hole of debt it will never climb out of. Nevertheless, apparently no amount of evidence that current prescriptions are failing would dissuade the government from its conviction that the answer lies in more of the same. Will continues,

But before embarking on Stimulus iii, note that only about 10 percent of Stimulus ii has yet been injected into the economy. This is not the administration’s fault, the administration’s defenders say, because government is cumbersome, sluggish and inefficient. But this sunburst of insight comes as the administration toils to enlarge governmental control of health care, energy, finance, education, etc. The administration guesses that these government projects will do better than the Postal Service (its second-quarter loss, $1.9 billion, was 68 percent of its losses for all of 2008) and the government’s railroad (Amtrak has had 38 money-losing years, and this year’s losses are on pace to set a record).

In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Obama tried to explain how the stimulus efforts actually have been working. But as House Minority Whip Eric Cantor said in the Republican radio response, the evidence proves otherwise.

[T]he plain truth is that President Obama’s economic decisions have not produced jobs, have not produced prosperity and have not worked. President Obama has already asked you to borrow trillions, and so far nearly 3 million jobs have been lost this year alone.Remember the promises? They promised you if you paid for their stimulus, jobs would be created immediately. In fact, they said that unemployment would stay under 8 percent.Yet just months later, they are telling us to brace for unemployment to climb over 10 percent. They promised jobs created. Now they scramble to find a way to play games with government numbers by claiming jobs saved.

Read Joel Hilliker’s article from last November “The Welfare State Spreads” to get a biblical perspective on America’s mushrooming government.

President and Pope Agree to Disagree

President Obama and his entire family, including his mother-in-law, met with Pope Benedict xvi in Italy on Friday. Although the meeting was reported as being cordial and positive, there was little doubt that one or two major fault lines run beneath the relationship.

While the two men discussed and found common ground on the issues of helping the poor and pushing for peace in the Middle East, their opinions clearly diverged on ethical issues, particularly abortion and stem-cell research.

“At the end of the day,” said Denis McDonough, spokesman for the National Security Council, “it may just be that there’s issues that they can’t come to agreement on, but I think [Obama] believes that you can disagree without being disagreeable.”

Although Mr. Obama reiterated his goal of reducing the number of abortions in America, he stood his ground—refusing to compromise on what he believes is a woman’s right to decide the fate of her unborn child—against the man many consider the moral and spiritual authority on such issues.

The pope, while amiable, also said nothing to water down his widely known opposition to abortion. As a gift, the pope gave Mr. Obama a copy of a year-old Vatican document on bioethics that helped shape the Catholic Church’s opposition to using embryos for stem-cell research, cloning and in-vitro fertilization. Mr. Obama supports stem-cell research.

It is important we monitor the fault lines that run beneath the relationship between Mr. Obama and Pope Benedict. As the Trumpetregularly explains, Bible prophecy says that immediately prior to Jesus Christ’s return a Catholic-dominated European superpower will overrun the United States.

Iran Heard Something Different

President Obama wrapped up the G-8 conference in Italy by claiming that the world’s major powers are ready to act if Iran refuses to stick to its word and sit down for negotiations about its nuclear program by September. The joint G-8 statement on Iran “provides a time frame,” Mr. Obama said. “If Iran chooses not to walk through that door, then you have on record the G-8 to begin with, but I think potentially a lot of other countries, that are going to say we need to take further steps.”

“My hope is that the Iranian leadership will look at the statement coming out of the G-8 and recognize that world opinion is clear,” stated Mr. Obama on Friday.

Iran clearly missed that clear opinion. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki responded Saturday morning by telling reporters: “There has been no new message from the G-8 which wrapped up its meeting last night. They (world leaders) had different views and in some cases they did not reach an overall agreement. … We are going to present our package which will be a basis to negotiate all regional and international issues.”

For more information, read Joel Hilliker’s recent column “Why Trouble in Iran Will Lead to War.”

American Dream Slipping Away

The college years used to be one of the best phases in life for many. Not anymore. “With tuition in the stratosphere,” the Washington Times reported today, “today’s graduates are facing the highest student-loan and credit-card debt levels ever—and the worst job market in a generation.”

The American dream of going to college, graduating with a high-paying job, buying a house and getting married and having children is fast slipping away. As Will Mohring, a 30-year-old graduate with $80,000 in school debt, put it: “How do you get married with a lot of debt? How do you buy a house with a lot of debt?”

Forget buying a house or getting married, the conundrum for college grads these days is simply finding a job. This is the worst job market for college graduates in 25 years. Unemployment for 20-to-24-year-olds is more than 15 percent, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and just 20 percent of 2009 graduates who applied for a job have one, down from more than 50 percent two years ago, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

As if the massive school loans and terrible job market are not enough, college students are also graduating with thousands of dollars on their credit cards. “Students are graduating with an average of $3,000 to $5,000 in credit-card debt,” said David Smith, founder and chairman of mobilize.org, a Washington-based group focused on college affordability. “Campuses are a hotbed of credit-card dealers. They show up on campus and offer you a free t-shirt or a free pizza and you sign up for a new credit card. You start spending beyond your means and think you will be able to pay it back later.”

Higher education is a terrible paradox. A college education is supposed to be the springboard that launches a young person into the American dream. Instead, it’s increasingly becoming a millstone holding graduates back from buying a house, getting married and having children.

This world needs a revolutionary new educational system. Thankfully, that is exactly what is coming. To learn about God’s system of education, read Education With Vision as well as The Wonderful World Tomorrow: What It Will Be Like.

“White Flight” in British Schools

British parents are pulling their children out of some English schools as white students find themselves among the minority, according to a report in the Times. The Institute of Community Cohesion (icc), which observed growing segregation in various English schools, examined 13 local areas and questioned parents from Bristol to Blackburn.

“We heard strong evidence of ‘white flight’ in some areas,” the report stated. It also noted, “Parental choice tended to push people to what they saw as the safe options, where children with similar backgrounds went.”

Policy director of icc and an author of the report, Nick Johnston, wrote, “People don’t mind a diverse school but what they do mind is their kid being in a visible minority in a school. This trend has increased in the last few years.”

As the Trumpet has previously observed, “Racial and religious issues are a growing problem in the UK. … The ideals of multiculturalism have failed. The British are slowly waking up to a great sickness that has infected their country. For more information on where this disease is leading, read ‘The Sickness in Britain’s Heart.’”

British Government Encouraging Underage Sex

The Daily Mailreported today on a shocking and despicable decision by the British government. Britain’s National Health Service is telling pupils they have a “right” to an enjoyable sex life in a leaflet—titled Pleasure—being sent to schools.

A Health Service leaflet says experts concentrate too much on the need for safe sex and loving relationships, and not enough on the pleasure it can bring. …Under the heading “An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away,” the leaflet says: “Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?”The advice, which also claims regular sex is good for cardiovascular health, has been circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers.

The leaflet has come to light just a week after it emerged that a £6 million government program teaching “safe sex” practices and handing out condoms to teenagers resulted in a doubling of the number of teenage girls conceiving.

Family values are under assault in the country once known for its Victorian morals. For information on why sex was created in the first place, and why God designed it for marriage, read The Missing Dimension in Sex.

Elsewhere on the Web

According to the Washington Business Journal, the 53 banks that have failed so far this year are only the tip of the iceberg. Apparently the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (fdic) has been held back from closing banks due to staffing issues. But now that they are staffed up, a large number of bank seizures are coming. Mark Dotzour, chief economist and director of research for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, compared the bad loans that remain on banks’ books to a smelly cat litter box, and says the feds keep throwing more litter on top to mask the smell. But they’ll eventually have to remove the organic material to fix the problem. When that happens the banks will fail, and that is what the fdic is preparing for. Be prepared for falling real-estate prices, and rising inflation and interest rates, says Dotzour.

According to the Daily Mail, 20 million people in Britain will be vaccinated against swine flu by Christmas, with everyone in the country receiving the jab by the middle of next year. Sixty million people in all will be inoculated. With such a dramatic, nationwide response in progress, you could be forgiven for thinking that the swine flu was a deadly killer. Actually, only one healthy person has died in Britain so far from swine flue. The other 14 people who have died were already sick or had compromised immune systems. Health officials are justifying the over-kill by saying that the virus could mutate and become more deadly.

And Finally …

Research is revealing a common characteristic among swine flu victims who become severely ill: They are fat.

“Doctors tracking the pandemic say they see a pattern in hospital reports from Glasgow to Melbourne and from Santiago to New York,” reported Bloomberg Friday. “People infected with the bug who have a body mass index greater than 40, deemed morbidly obese, suffer respiratory complications that are harder to treat and can be fatal.”

“Morbid obesity is one of the most common findings turning up in severely ill patients,” said Nikki Shindo, who is leading the investigation of swine flu patients at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s a huge problem.”

Want to avoid getting sick or even dying from the swine flu? Dust off the treadmill.